I just want a database that takes no configuration options except for a list of peers and a disk partition to write to and provides strictly serializable transactions 100% of the time (modulo partitions).

I'd rather start with slow and correct, and implement hacks to improve performance once slow becomes "too slow". But instead, database engines are sold on benchmark performance, so out of the box they lose transactions they told you they committed, or read uncommitted writes, or all sorts of other crazy things. I don't want this unless I write code myself to do those things. (If I go through the API, it must be completely consistent. If I clone the drive of the database server and pick around at random disk blocks, sure, maybe I'll see some uncommitted writes.)